The Users for the first session were 5 males and 1 female, with age ranging from 27 to 49. For the second, there were 4 males with age ranging from 26 to 52, with significant Brainstorming sessions experience, using Mind-mapping software, whiteboard computer based systems. The room setup consisted from a large space around Surface, with chairs surrounding it. All users were in the Contributor role and they had the opportunity to switch to Session Master any time. The application was started, with no Brainstorming Ideas on the tabletop.

The Evaluation session started with the Prototype presentation. This was targeted only on the User Interfaces, explaining how and which actions can be performed with each area of interest (UserControls and Main SurfaceWindow from Implementation Chapter). The users were encouraged to experience the interface and ask questions during the presentation, in order to understand better the interaction with the prototype.

Following the presentation phase was designed as a game, in order to exercise the prototype’s interface and evaluate the system and its features. The game was built around a imaginary, newly created, travel agency. The participants should create the company’s portfolio in a Brainstorming session, composed from the four phases (scenarios) presented in Typical use cases. They were disclosed one by one, in order to not affect the brainstorming process.

The prototype’s architecture implementation

The architecture was already presented in the Prototype application architecture and now we’ll see the actual implementation. The prototype implementation tries to follow as close as possible the recommended architectural patterns and guidelines. To support the argumentation, a class diagram will be presented to give a visual orientation through the prototype implementation presentation.

The built prototype supporting Brainstorming Sessions on Microsoft Surface, further named Breiny, was developed as part of this thesis and uses all the above framework features. Thus, it is creating the basis for future work by being flexible in development yet fully packed with features.

Breiny’s class diagram

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This article presents the system architecture and the underlying decisions that were taken to achieve the above requirements. The system requires a repository for sessions, a repository for Brainstorming items and a native Windows application for achieving the baseline of desired features. Thus, a distributed client – server architecture is considered, exemplified below.

Session repository architecture

The above schema represents the Session repository architecture. Its main purpose is to offer two main features:

• communication over network
• means for storing, retrieving and sharing the sessions

The server and the native application can be mixed together, but with limited sharing options. Because of this reason, we will use an already created system which not only that offers through its network module of API (Application Programming Interface) both means of storing and retrieving of the session data, but also allows advanced features of sharing the data in an already familiar interface.

Brainstorming items repository architecture

The architecture for the Brainstorming items repository is similar with the one for Session repository, but the most important feature it brings is the possibility to interface with other devices, not only with the tabletop.

Another reason for creating this secondary architecture is the fact that it easily enables an offline scenario, in which the repository server is not available because of the network availability issues. Nevertheless, the mobile devices can connect to this repository through creating a local wireless network without the need to be connected to the internet. Another advantage is that, because it’s small complexity, can (but it is not required to) be installed on the same tabletop. The offline scenario is not covered in this paper, but rather proposed as future work.

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Because of the specifics of the brainstorming activities, there are two sets of features that must or can be implemented: the first ones which regulate the brainstorming activity as a set of rules; the second ones add productivity to the process, enabling additional scenarios that improve the user experience. In the first phase of requirements elicitation for such a system, the Microsoft Surface was chosen as a direct, face to face collaboration. For enabling the sharing of Brainstorming session, BSCW system was chosen as it enables shared workspace paradigm, allowing easier collaboration and cooperation among users with common interests.

Detailed usages of typical brainstorming and idea generation tools were presented in Related work. What all this papers have in common are few scenarios which are very important for the idea generation process:

• Creation of ideas and inserting them into the system (e.g. Creating text items with brainstormed ideas)
• Editing (e.g. Correcting, improving and augment with graphical elements the already existing items)
• Grouping through visual clues (e.g. creating logically grouping structures with the aid of  visual elements)
• Relating (e.g. creating a tree-like relation that gives a structured form to the ideas generated through the process towards a specific goal)

A typical user scenario is presented to clarify the use and features provided by the system.

Anton, Kai and Vladimir are three students developing applications in Fraunhofer FIT under the supervision of a research assistant, Greg. They set up a meeting in the User Experience lab, where the Microsoft Surface is, and set as their goal to create a new system for helping people with Alzheimer.

Because Greg is the coordinator of the brainstorming session, he uses its card to login into his BSCW system which will be later used as a repository and central sharing hub for the outcome of this session. Then he inputs the text “Alzheimer project” into the central control on the application, allowing all of them to keep focus on their goal. They start adding to the Surface the ideas that they have, as the brainstorming process is about quantity. When they feel that a small dose of inspiration is required, they use the application’s feature of searching in Twitter or Flickr for fresh ideas or hints. Since they work on the same device, the awareness of each one presence is complete, conversations start over some interesting features, raising more and more ideas for their project.

After the main part of the brainstorming is finished and all ideas are inputed on Microsoft Surface application, the next phase starts – reviewing their ideas and correct the small mistakes that they made in typing. Anton also quickly adds some more visual hints to ideas, like arrows pointing to the text or underlines some important keywords. Kai enjoys the dictation feature of the application to quickly add some more information to some ideas that he feels that aren’t very well explained.

With all ideas correct and complete, they go into the next phase of requirements elicitation for their application start grouping them into functional and non-functional features for their system, using the background colors to create visual hints. This enables them to have a quick overview on the ideas they gathered and relate them to a specific part of their software planning.

The nest step in the process is to link the ideas into a tree like structure, as all good software developers do, identifying the dependencies between the ideas. This will prove useful later, when they will create the necessary UML diagrams for the software.

Since they will go afterwards to their own workstations and they need to review and create the appropriate documents for their project, Greg uses the saving feature of the application, which will create a folder in his Workspace on the BSCW system. In it he will later find a screenshot of the application’s screen to have a quick visual of the session, the entire session metadata saved as XML for later use in other applications and a collection of all ideas saved as HTML documents.

Because all work needs to be shared and the session repository is on the BSCW system, Greg can share his session with his colleagues by inviting them to the session directory. Thus, not only that all of them will have access to the session, but they can choose later to present the outcome of their work to their Professor, by using the Load session capability of the Microsoft Surface application.

An additional scenario can be used with this application, if there is time for Brainstorming session preparation:

If they have time to prepare for the meeting, some rough ideas may have been conceived before and they want to share with each other. Because using the Microsoft Surface is not possible with prior reservation, they may use the additional clients of the system to record their initial ideas: Adobe Air application (available for Windows, Linux and Apple) and an iPad and iPhone client for the mobile devices. Anton and Vladimir use the Adobe Air client to quickly create and send their ideas to the Surface default user, where the brainstorming items will be recorded and made available in the next Brainstorming session. Kai uses its iPhone to do the same, as he gets its best ideas while commuting. 

Next let’s see how the requirements look like!